A standard brassiere has a strap assembly that passes over the shoulders and behind the back of the wearer, and a front pair of cups that fit over the wearer's breasts, that are joined together between the wearer's breasts, and that are connected to the strap assembly so as to hold in place. Each cup is traditionally made of fabric with some sort of stiffening, and is provided with an underwire that fit under the breast against the wearer's chest. The obvious purpose is to hold and support the breasts while providing the wearer with an attractive shape.
As a brassiere is typically worn all day, it must be as comfortable as possible. A major source of discomfort is the normally hard underwire that can, with time, shift so as to poke the wearer, ride up, or otherwise move to be quite uncomfortable.
In copending application Ser. No. 11/546,944 filed 12 Oct. 2006 we disclose a brassiere that has a pair of cups each provided with a respective underwire assembly. Each such assembly has inner and outer U-shaped hard underwire portions extending substantially parallel to each other below a respective cup of the brassiere, joined together at ends, and separated by an arcuate slot between the ends. The underwire formed by the two portions has a shaped that, in an unstressed or relaxed condition, is arcuately concave in a first upward direction so as to conform to the contour of a breast in the cup, and is also arcuately concave in a second horizontal direction transverse to the first direction so as to conform to the contour of the chest of a wearer of the brassiere. The underwire is embedded in a soft plastic body having an apron along a concave side of the body lying at an angle to the hard underwire portions so that the body and the underwire form a pocket receiving a breast of the wearer in the cup.
Thus according to this earlier invention the underwire has two separate curvatures, each generally determined by one of the two sizes—back and cup—of the brassiere to which it is applied. Thus the underwire for an A cup will have a much smaller radius of curvature for its upward or first curvature than for a D cup, and similarly an underwire for a size-40 brassiere will have a larger radius of curvature of for its rearward or second curvature than for a size-34 brassiere. The result is an underwire that sits flatly against the user without deformation, unlike the prior-art systems there the underwire is planar and must deform to fit against the wearer's chest so that it bears with greater pressure in the center than at the ends.
Such an assembly is a substantial improvement over the single underwire of the prior art. Nonetheless, it is relatively complex to integrate it into a cup liner.